“[I]n the later Roman Empire frontiers became softer and immigration control more lax at the same time as citizenship and ethnic distinctions within the Empire were becoming blurred. The universal grant of citizenship by the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 AD was only a formal recognition by the state of a long process that had diminished the concept of citizenship and eroded the distinction between cives and peregrini in the provinces. By the fourth century status and wealth counted for more socially and legally than citizenship….

“To sum up, far from the homogenization of what the Constitutio Antoniniana called the patria communis, that is, the population of the Roman community, internal, social divisions became stronger. Ironically, however, the refinements of status distinctions and social divisions served as a more effective vehicle than any legal measure to allow immigrants to integrate at all levels. What mattered was not whether you were a citizen but whether you could attain equal social or economic status. In this respect, the Roman Empire of the fourth century was the reverse image of the nation-state in the nineteenth century. The juridical personality of the citizen was almost eliminated as frontier controls relaxed and as immigrants were accomodated in ever greater numbers….

“Immigrants provided substitutes for rural recruits, thus leaving agricultural workers on the land to increase state revenue, since they increased the capitation tax and added extra income through the system of adaeratio, which bought them exemption from the military levy. There clearly were concerns in the imperial chancellery for the tax regime and for the rents from imperial estates, which was reflected in contemporary legislation….

“These fiscal and economic benefits to rural production coincide with the concern expressed by the Gallic panegyricists about agri deserti and high taxes, and hence their praise for ‘so many farmers in the Roman countryside’, both as immigrants and as returning prisoners… The essential point, however, is that … immigrants were officially perceived as good for the economy by bringing down the price of food and by servicing local markets through increased production.

“Whether the peasants of the Gallic countryside felt the same pleasure at the fall in market prices is another matter, and it may have provoked resentment. If modern experience is any guide, there is a sharp difference between economists, who calculate that immigrants are essential to economic growth, and popular opinion, which always believes that immigrants are undesirable because they depress the labor market. But there is no evidence to show that there was institutional, social discrimination against foreign-born workers, once settled inside the Roman Empire….“

the author also refers to [pg. 212]:

“The long history, since Augustus [r. 27b.c.-19a.d.], of frontiers open to foreign migrants, and the even longer history of liberal access to citizenship and Romanization…”

“[I]mpelled from their homes by cataclysms still shrouded in mystery, they [the germans] began pressing westward and southward in a series of waves climaxing in the fifth and sixth centuries. In addition to feeling pressures from behind — famine, drought, Huns — they were drawn into the Roman Empire by the magnet of an economically and technically advanced region, with its cities and villas, granaries and warehouses, shops, tools, coins, and ornaments, in a species of ‘gold rush’ (in the phrase of a modern historian). Columns of thousands or tens of thousands of Goths, Gepids, Alemanni, and other peoples from the north and east, men, women, children, and animals, filtered or flooded through the Roman frontier defenses, sometimes peacefully and by permission, sometimes violently or by taking advantage of the moments when the legions were absent contesting the Imprerial succession on behalf of their generals….

“In the later stage of the Migrations, large numbers of several major groupings — Burgundians, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks — entered Gaul and Italy as foederati, or allies, by a negotiated arrangement that settled barbarian families on arable land in much the same fashion that Roman veterans had been settled in the earlier period. This episode in the Great Migrations apparently took place with little friction between newcomers and old inhabitants.**

“**Walter Goffart (Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418-584: The Techniques of Accomodation) postulates that instead of being given lands expropriated from Roman and Gallo-Roman proprietors, many of the Germans were assigned revenues from normal taxation in the provinces in which they were settled, in return for which they garrisoned the frontiers against later arrivals.”

little friction? why? how?

i’m sure that a big part of the reason why westerners today don’t seem to be very concerned about mass immigration to their countries is ’cause times are good (or they were up until very recently). maybe something like that was also the case for roman empire days? i dunno.

“Even stronger than the bar to interclass marriage was the proscription against incest or marrying ‘in.’ Early Rome forbade marriage between second cousins, but over time the rule was relaxed, and even first cousins were allowed to marry. When the Emperor Claudius (reigned A.D. 41-54) chose for his fourth wife his niece Agrippina, the public was shocked, but the Senate obligingly revised the legal definition of incest, and (according to Suetonius) at least two other uncle-niece marriages were recorded. This was an exceptional case, but in revealing the flexible nature of exogamy rules it foreshadowed much medieval controversy.”

so in early rome — in the days of the republic — you couldn’t marry anyone closer than second cousins. hmmm…. i’ll have to check the dates on when the changes started to happen, and also how strong enforcement was and all that. but, interesting. very interesting!

The demise of the Roman Empire or any other similar empire had nothing to do with “physical limits” imposed by the Earth that are de facto infinite (i.e. vacuous) for all practical purposes.

Instead, the demise of the Roman Empire had complex reasons but they were indeed analogous to the reasons we see today (because the Roman Empire was indeed analogous to the West in many respects) – the main pathological processes underlying the demise were the culture of dependency and entitlement (people expecting too many things for free), overbloated bureaucracy (the public sector) with too many layers of parasites hired to “centrally solve problems” whose income is disconnected from their actual contributions to their countrymates, insufficient protection against immigration, suicidal unrealistic social-engineering projects to incorporate and “elevate” new underdeveloped ethnic groups (no, Roman folks, your success wasn’t just about your system: some other ethnic groups simply didn’t have the potential to live in your Western lifestyle and you should have allowed those savages to remain savages), unrealistic yet intrusive “planning” by the central government in general, and so on. Hard natural limits played no role and they are playing no role today. It’s always the growth of the tumor of the left-wing thinking – the denial of the fact that things cost something (or must cost something) and life is ultimately a competition – that kills civilizations such as the Roman Empire or maybe ours in the future.

@luke – “‘…too many layers of parasites hired to “centrally solve problems” whose income is disconnected from their actual contributions to their countrymates, insufficient protection against immigration, suicidal unrealistic social-engineering projects to incorporate and “elevate” new underdeveloped ethnic groups (no, Roman folks, your success wasn’t just about your system: some other ethnic groups simply didn’t have the potential to live in your Western lifestyle and you should have allowed those savages to remain savages)….'”

yeah. the parallels between us and the romans are … distressing to think about. =/

There’s a big difference, though… the Romans weren’t on the cusp of sequencing every human being on the planet.

I think many of us in the HBD’osphere (of all people!) underestimate the profound effect that embryo screening is going to have. The objections of bioethicists will be swept aside (especially once it turns out that “the Chinese are doing it”), and nothing will be the same afterwards.

Interestingly for today’s applications, the biggest defeat of the Roman army was at the hands of a former roman army soldier/immigrant. A germanic tribesman named Herman joined the roman army as something similar to a captin in today’s description, learned their ways and means, and left to forment nationalism back home. When the romans sent an expedition to fight the growing teutonic hordes, herman *destroyed* them in the battle of teutonburg forest. As a former roman he knew his enemy perfectly and so was able to use strength against their weaknesses.
How long until the USMC, say, fights a drug gang run by a former marine?

Very late to the party, but just wanted to say your first ‘Rome and Its Frontiers’ excerpt really piqued my interest, as I’m trying to learn more about in-migration to Rome at that period. So THANKS for putting up these references!

let me know if you come across anything really interesting on the topic ’cause it’s become a sort-of side interest of mine now, too. it’s really something how history really does seem to repeat itself. =/

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